Spring Break--Part 5: Bear Denning Trip

We split up for the final days of Spring Break. Due to the bad snowstorm in the first denning trip, a trip to visit Xina was still in order. So April got herself invited along for the last bear den of the season.

Meanwhile Kevin and children hung out in SLC and visited the Museum of Natural History, This is the Place Monument, and our friends the Bucherts. However, the children forgot their cameras so there aren't any photos of their fun adventures--you'll have to settle for just bears--AGAIN!

April met the crew in Mapleton, but we got a late start driving out and arrived at the Pine Springs Hilton around 12:30 a.m. We slept in until 7:00 a.m. the following morning. It was bright and sunny, but pretty cold.

The Hilton has had a bit of a face lift since 3 years ago: new floor (very slippery when wet!), a couple of new mattresses for the bunks, and new window blinds (we kept making fun of those). There was also wood stacked for a new deck, and 2 screen doors were awaiting installation.

It was amazing how little snow there was compared to a month ago!
Instead we had lots of gooey mud.

Here is Hal by the truck: Doesn't he look so rugged?
(inside joke)

The flight data put Xina's den up this small draw.
A quick check with our radio confirmed that.

Josh brought along his little family for this trip. Here he is with 19-month old Eliza. She is adorable, and Mary (Josh's wife) and April made plans to get Eliza and Dallin together in another 20 years. (Dallin's list of possible girlfriends is growing...he's got two cuties now!)

We'll skip the details of choosing the wrong side to hike up initially (the radio signal bounces a lot where there are rocky cliff faces, so it's difficult to tell), but we made it to the den around noon. Xina was holed up underneath this rock almost to the top of the ridge. Last year she had 3 yearlings with her, so there was a good chance that she would have cubs this year.

There was A LOT of pine nut bear scat outside the den from last fall.

Josh tranquilized her, and within 20 minutes she was asleep.

We didn't hear any cubs squalling, so there was no need to pull Xina out. Instead we took turns crawling into the den to take a look at her and check her collar. These are April's feet in the photo--she was putting lubricating eye drops into Xina's eyes since the tranquilizer dries them out. Notice her camo gaiters. Hal was going to send them to the DI after he got some new ones, but she saved him the effort and took them off his hands.

April retrieved her camera and crawled back in after administering the eye drops to get this photo of Xina snoozing in her comfy nest.

Hmmm...is anyone wondering why we ended up pulling her out of the den?

Surprise! There was a 2-year-old with her! Three of us had crawled into the den and not seen him because he was hiding quietly behind his mom. Josh was back in the den and thought he heard a noise. He wondered if perhaps there was a cub underneath Xina, so he started feeling around her when all of a sudden the head of the 2-year-old popped up. Josh came scurrying out pretty fast and said, "There's another bear in there!" Because the young one was hiding so well and not accessible, it took 3 jabs and 1.5 hours to get it to go to sleep. This is the first time in this study that a 2-year-old has been found in a den. Pretty exciting data!

He turned out to be rather large--we guessed he weighed around 120 lbs.
Since he was a male, he did not get a fancy radio collar.
We estimated that Xina was over 200 lbs.

So both bears got pulled out in the end.
It made for better photo opportunities, however.
And Eliza got to see her very first bear!

Valley of thick vegetation that we had to bushwhack through
coming and going from the road

On the drive out, Hal got the truck stuck in some of the aforementioned gooey mud.

Trying to avoid chaining up, we attempted
and succeeded at a rescue effort:

Dallin and April were thankfully reunited around 10:30 p.m. Saturday night--am I a bad mom for leaving him for 2 nights now to go chase after bears? He doesn't need to worry about being abandoned any more until next February or March. Maybe next year we can take the whole family out to the "circus day bear."

Spring Break--Part 4: Hodgepodge

Here is our Suburban after slamming into an unfortunate adult mule deer doe at 60 mph along Highway 132 a few miles west of Nephi, Utah. We were grateful that nobody was hurt (well...other than the poor deer), and our vehicle was still functional. The photo does not distinctly show the bits of deer hair stuck in cracks, that the headlights are pointing different directions, that the left side of the hood has a pretty big dent, or that part of the radiator was squished (but not leaking, thank goodness). A mechanic said we could continue safely on our trip and wait to get it fixed back in Logan.

The exquisite Manti Temple
Megan and her YW group attended the annual pageant here last fall.

Searching for obsidian in a canyon near Big Rock Candy Mountain.

April, Erin, and Dallin hung out in Monroe with some relatives while the others collected rocks. Erin watched WALL-E while April and Tania updated each other with family news. We forgot to take a photo of Tania and Gary until the very end of the evening, but here they are:

Spring Break--Part 3: Topaz Mountain

Poor Ian felt like he waited forever before we let him do some rock hounding. We took him to Topaz Mountain, but, being unfamiliar with the area, we did not allow enough time for rock collecting. We should have brought our camping gear to spend the night to give us a second day there.

Since we're still biologists at heart, the first thing we did
upon arrival was catch a side-blotched lizard.

Then a die-hard rock hounder came over to us, talked with us about rocks, showed us his stash (he and his wife spend months collecting and sell their rocks at various shows), and recommended that we look for the clear topaz in the wash area due to our limited daylight time.

So we spent the next couple of hours developing a search image for clear topaz,

and ended up with a lot of this:

Spring Break--Part 2: Little Sahara Recreation Area

Kevin planned the next part of our trip to Little Sahara Recreation Area. It is a sand dune area in central Utah, and although it isn't nearly as impressive as the Algodones Sand Dunes in Ca., where we sometimes played during our lizard field seasons, it was pretty fun for the children. The day was cool, but we warmed up after much running and jumping.

Dallin was excited to get out of the car and MOVE!
He was not the best traveler during the long drives.
We all admit we were tired of his shrieks of protest.

Yuki was happy that she was allowed to run through the sand too.
She hasn't panted this hard for months!

Action shot of Ian in the dunes:

Even though there wasn't much off-road activity the day we visited, we did stay within the fenced area reserved for non-ATV users. Parts of the fence are disappearing in the drifting sand.

We forgot to pack the sand toys, but a big spoon can work just as well for toddler digging,
or just to have something to carry around.

We made this shamrock in honor of it being St. Patrick's Day.

Spring Break--Part 1: Sage-grouse Trapping

Our family was anxiously awaiting Spring Break this year because Kevin wouldn't have to spend it writing his dissertation. April planned the first activity: sage-grouse trapping! A friend from our ward, Dave D., invited us out to visit one of his study sites and see how he traps, tags, and radio-collars sage-grouse. Friday night as soon as Kevin arrived home, we loaded up the Suburban with all our warm winter clothes and some food and drove to the Deseret Land and Livestock (DLL) Ranch located a few miles past Woodruff, Utah.

We arrived around 9:30 p.m., about 30 minutes before the group left for the trapping. Megan agreed to tend Dallin at Dave's "base camp" (a nice apartment the DLL provides for his work) since trapping conditions were not entirely suitable for keeping an 18-month-old happy until 2:00 a.m. Even though we brought one of his favorite balls, Dallin was a little bit worried when we left.

We bundled up with layers of warm clothing and rode out to the sagebrush sites in this awesome little ATV truck. The other group of field technicians were on a 4-wheeler. Erin sat in the heated cab and talked Dave's ear off, while Kevin, April, and Ian bounced along in the back.

Once in the sage-grouse area, Kevin drove the mini-truck with Erin still engaged in non-stop chatter, while Dave spotlighted from the back with Ian and April. The method is to find a grouse using a spotlight and keep it blinded by the light while someone sneaks up with a net to catch it. We drove, and drove, and drove and looked and looked and looked. We saw a lot of rabbits, scared up a few small birds, but found no grouse...until about 2 hours later.

Dave saw an eye shine in the spotlight, pounded on the roof to let Kevin know to slow down, handed April the spotlight to keep on the bird, grabbed the net, jumped off the truck, and ran up to catch it. And it was a successful catch of a young hen! April got to band it, then Dave weighed it, took some measurements, and released it.

Erin did a victory dance in the back of the truck afterwards!

After the thrill of the first capture, we were all excited to find some more! Soon after, Dave caught a male. Kevin got to hold it down under the net while Dave got ready to take it out.

This grouse was also banded, weighed, and measured, and then it got a fancy radio collar attached around its neck. Only males are collared for this current study. The birds get really stressed during all of this, so you have to work quickly.

Here's the crew with catch #2!

We have to include the token photo of sage-grouse scat:

We found some more groups of grouse, but only caught one more hen. All in all, it was a slow night, but we had a blast. It is always so fun to visit another type of field study and see what the biologists do. We returned to the apartment around 2:00 a.m. Erin had managed to talk non-stop during the entire 4 hours. She laughed over the big bumps, and kept talking about "what a crazy night this is!" Megan and Dallin were snoozing peacefully upon our return, so we climbed into our sleeping bags and slept too.

The next morning we saw Dave's dogs, Buddy, Scout, and Parker.
They are well-trained bird dogs and help him out locating birds during the days.

This is an overview of part of the DLL.

The prairie dogs were very active in the morning, and as we drove out we saw hundreds along the sides of the road! They were not very shy at all.

Some pronghorn graced us with their presence as well.

Dave has invited us back to watch the breeding dances on the leks in another month. We've only seen those on nature shows, so we are jumping at this upcoming opportunity. Stay tuned!